Deacon Andrew Bennett was certainly right in his Feb. 11 column to correct my error in generalizing the “approval” understanding of blessings as being “corrupted and secularized.” I was unaware of the Eastern understanding of blessings. An online commenter graciously corrected me after my article was published.
I have always been frustrated by moments, especially in political speeches, where half a well-known adage is presented as proof of concept, completely ignoring the original context and the fuller saying. We see this often when someone cherry-picks part of a saying to prove their point but leaves out significant context that might disprove their argument as a whole.
People are curious and beautiful and mysterious. One of the things I love most about humans is our capacity to make meaning. It is endlessly fascinating to me that many people can be in the same room, experiencing the same objective reality and come away with such beautifully different perspectives and subjective understandings of what has happened. We are all living in the stories of our lives, whether we acknowledge them or not.
Verbatim: Excerpt from Pope Francis’ message for Lent
An excerpt from Pope Francis’ message for Lent “Through the Desert God leads us to Freedom.”
Today we are faced with unbelievable violence in the Holy Land. We who follow the nonviolent Jesus can feel only deep pain, and an urgent call to bring an end to the violence both of Hamas and the Israeli government.